Saturday, July 03, 2010

While everyone seems to be watching the Arctic extent with intense interest, it’s bipolar twin continues to make enough ice to keep the global sea ice balance near normal. These images from Cryosphere today provide the details. You won’t see any mention of this in the media. Google News returns no stories about Antarctic Sea Ice Exent.

The Jerusalem Post interviewed former Labor member Ami Ayalon about the recent flotilla case, but while he thinks it shouldn't have come to this, I still have doubts he would've done a better job if he were in charge:

At other points in his life, this past month might have found Ami Ayalon at the center of attention. If the international flotilla to Gaza had come while he was in command of the elite naval commando force Flotilla 13, or later when he commanded the navy, or after that, when he helped lead the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) or even later when he served as a government minister, he might have been at the center of the decision-making process.

But it didn’t, and instead, Ayalon found himself in late May in the unlikely – and unaccustomed – position of observing events from the side. After his departure from political life, Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s one-time rival has watched the unfolding of the past few weeks’ events with more than a little concern, stemming from years of experience on both tactical and strategic levels.

The events of May 31, when naval commandos stormed the flotilla’s ships, were neither unexpected nor unavoidable, Ayalon told The Jerusalem Post.

“I was not surprised when I heard the initial reports, because I have participated in an uncountable number of operations in which you know two things: First, there is no military operation that goes exactly as planned, and second, when you send combat soldiers to arrest civilians, and you tell them that is their goal, you must assume that civilians will be killed. If you put those two factors together, it was almost predictable that those would be the results.”

Two days before the navy confronted the flotilla, Ayalon recalled, an interviewer found him participating in a conference at Tel Aviv University, and asked him what he thought should be done to stop the flotilla. “I asked the interviewer why we needed to stop it, and he was horrified,” Ayalon recalled. “We must differentiate between the need to stop entry of heavy weaponry into Gaza, which is a clear interest that nobody questions, and between a situation in which we stand looking at six boats about to come, on board which intelligence knows there is no heavy weaponry – I’m not talking about a few handguns. Instead, this is a struggle for public relations, and so I think from the beginning that the system should work completely differently, involving the international community and only blocking weapons.

“So I say to him, ‘Why do you think that the only option is to stop it? Let’s imagine a situation in which we take a few civilian boats, go out, meet them at sea, during daylight and with huge pictures of Gilad Schalit on our ships and we sail together to Gaza. They bring humanitarian supplies and we demand that Ismail Haniyeh allows us to see Gilad Schalit.’”

Such a move, Ayalon said, would have redirected some of the international attention away from Hamas propaganda and on to the captured IDF soldier.

Or would it? Given how horrific the overseas track record the MSM has, I'm not sure that would be the case.

And there's something very odd about how Ayalon frames the whole conversation with another interviewer, who could be a conservative. The reason we have to stop these flotillas is because we have no way of knowing whether they're smuggling weapons or not, and no way to be sure if it's not a ruse. Seems to me as though Ayalon was just inciting against the other journalist for not taking a stand he agrees with.

Plus, Ayalon has long been a leftist, more or less, and his policies not all that different from Ehud Barak's. So I doubt he'd do much better if he were in charge.

And I thought Barack Obama’s response to the jobs numbers yesterday was clueless. Obama proposed spending $800 million to create 5,000 jobs, which would install broadband technology where it hasn’t already expanded because of demand, which will cost $160,000 per job.

Today, Obama has refined his approach in his weekly address, proposing to spend even more money to create jobs that will mainly disappear:

That’s one of the reasons why we’re accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy and doubling our use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power – steps that have the potential to create whole new industries and hundreds of thousands of new jobs in America.

In fact, today, I’m announcing that the Department of Energy is awarding nearly $2 billion in conditional commitments to two solar companies.

The first is Abengoa Solar, a company that has agreed to build one of the largest solar plants in the world right here in the United States. After years of watching companies build things and create jobs overseas, it’s good news that we’ve attracted a company to our shores to build a plant and create jobs right here in America. In the short term, construction will create approximately 1,600 jobs in Arizona. What’s more, over 70 percent of the components and products used in construction will be manufactured in the USA, boosting jobs and communities in states up and down the supply chain. Once completed, this plant will be the first large-scale solar plant in the U.S. to actually store the energy it generates for later use – even at night. And it will generate enough clean, renewable energy to power 70,000 homes.

The second company is Abound Solar Manufacturing, which will manufacture advanced solar panels at two new plants, creating more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs. A Colorado plant is already underway, and an Indiana plant will be built in what’s now an empty Chrysler factory. When fully operational, these plants will produce millions of state-of-the-art solar panels each year.

If this is an example of how Obama will sell the green-jobs economy, he’d better hope that the public schools get a lot worse than they already are at teaching math.

Obama proposes spending $2 billion to create a total of 5,100 jobs. That will cost $392,156.87 per job.

That kind of money, in the private sector at least, should fund several jobs. Heck, even a government bureaucrat costs less than that; even at the Department of Transportation, that would cover two and have enough left over for a secretary.

THIS AIN'T ABOUT JOBS OR IMPROVING THE ECONOMY;

THESE CONTRACTS REWARD PARTS OF THE MACHINE AND DRIVING ENERGY COSTS UP TO DRIVE PRIVATE ENTERPRISE OUT.

Winston Churchill fought in a punitive expedition on the Afghan border in 1897. In his enormously entertaining memoirs My Early Lifehe offers a description of the Pathan-speaking tribes, from whom the Taliban regime is drawn, that's one of my all-time favorite pieces of prose. (Recently, the People Who Are in Charge of These Things have changed the transliteration from "Pathan" to "Pashtun" in their frenzied attempt to use words, not to communicate, but to expose the rest of us as being shockingly less trendy than they are.)

Except at harvest time, when self-preservation enjoins a temporary truce, the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician, and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress made, it is true, only of sunbaked clay, but with battlements, turrets, loopholes, flanking towers, drawbridges, etc., complete. Every village has its defense. Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud. The numerous tribes and combination of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one another. Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid… The life of the Pathan is thus full of interest…

Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts; the breech-loading rifle and the British Government. The first was an enormous luxury and blessing; the second, an unmitigated nuisance. The convenience of the breech-loading, and still more of the magazine, rifle was nowhere more appreciated than in the Indian highlands. A weapon which could kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it. One could actually remain in one's own house and fire at one's neighbor nearly a mile away.

John Huston's hilarious and heartbreaking movie The Man Who Would Be King, based on a Rudyard Kipling short story set in a region of Afghanistan now called Nuristan, offers a similar perspective. In 1997 Jonny Bealby retraced the fictional steps of Kipling's rogues Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnehan and found nothing had changed.

"On the four week journey, I'd heard of twelve murders and enough tales of thieving and brigandage to fill a small book," Bealby recounted. "When I asked Ismael, our Nuristani translator, why this should be, he simply shrugged, 'It is our culture,' he said."

Rick Bragg's amusing account in the NY Times on 10/21 found a world with which Churchill and Kipling would have been familiar:

When a male child is born in a Pashtun village, gunfire is the first sound he hears. Pashtun men celebrate the birth of a brand-new warrior by firing their rifles into the sky, and the lead falls back to the powdery earth like drops of hard rain… Muskets did not shoot very high and the bullets were tiny, say Pashtun elders, so there was little risk from falling lead during the celebration. Then, generations later, Pashtun took Kalashnikov rifles from Soviet soldiers they killed in the war that led to an ignominious Soviet retreat in 1989. "But the Kalashnikov bullet was so big and heavy that, when we fired it in celebration, it dropped back down back out of the sky, and killed us." … That does not mean the shooting stopped. Tradition, the elder said, holds firm here. Even the police, who frown on the power of tradition, are ignored. "A law, a government, is not so much a factor here," Mr. Taizi said. …

This is a tribe that anthropologists consider one of the oldest on earth, bound by a common language, but also by millenniums of marriage, and by blood. As Islamic militants use religion as a rallying cry all around the Muslim world, here on the border it is ethnicity as much as Islam that ties Pakistanis to their Afghan cousins — even those in the Taliban. A proud, almost arrogant people who fought Alexander the Great, they have fought among themselves for centuries, as families do…

"You people in America say that human life is sacred," said Mr. Khattak. "Here, life is nothing without honor." Outsiders have, over the centuries, sometimes developed a lower opinion. … A British officer once advised his superiors not to waste bullets on the Pashtun. Buy them, he said.

The article concludes on an optimistic note, though, by offering a way to bring peace:

There is, in Pashtun law, an alternative to war. If one village or clan wrongs another by killing one of its members, the village of the killer can offer to the wronged village a girl, to be taken as a wife by one of the villagers. But the woman, Mr. Taizi said, is mistreated all her life. She is never regarded as an equal. "She is persecuted," he said. It is tradition.

Afghanistan's division into warring families is tragic-comically extreme, probably due to the severity of the terrain. But it's important to realize that the Pathans are much closer to the default form of human society than we are.

THIS IS WHY WE SHOULD HAVE JUST NUKED TORA BORA IN DECEMBER 2001.

DON'T GET ME WRONG:

I'M ALL FOR NATION-BUILDING - IT WORKED IN JAPAN AFTER WW2 - BUT FIRST YOU MUST UTTERLY VANQUISH THE ENEMY.

AND DON'T CALL ME CRUEL: WHAT WOULD BE REALLY TRULY MADLY AND DEEPLY CRUEL WOULD BE FORCING ANY HUMAN BEING TO LIVE UNDER TALIBAN-LIKE SHARIA OR PASHTUN-LIKE --- EVEN SAUDI-LIKE- CULTURE.

YES: WW4 IS A WAR BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS --- OR MORE ACCURATELY, THE CIVILIZED AND THE UNCIVILIZED.

TO WIN THIS WAR AGAINST THIS MOST HORRIBLE ENEMY, WE MUST FIRST DEFEAT THE APPEASING POSTMODERN LEFT AT HOME.

The Thread

Not even liberal bloggers believe the White House spin on the economy.

EXCERPT:

once the spin starts, it’s hard to stop. “The economy is headed in the right direction,” President Obama told a crowd in Racine, Wis., the other day. It’s unclear whether the assembled Cheeseheads took his word for it. But it’s very clear that even the most liberal bloggers did not.

WE WILL TURN AROUND THE ECONOMY WHEN WE TAKE BACK THE CONGRESS BY VOTING GOP THIS NOVEMBER!

The developers of a solar lamp that aims to replace kerosene-burning lights in developing countries have won a prestigious environmental award.

D Light Design says its lanterns, which sell for around $10 (£7), contribute to the reduction of carbon emissions.

One of the runners-up for the Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy was the Rural Energy Foundation (REF) for promoting solar energy in Africa.

More than 70% of sub-Saharan Africa has no access to electricity.

D Light takes home the £40,000 ($61,000) Gold Award, for "its passion and dedication to the cause of ridding the developing world of the health and pollution problems associated with the use of kerosene lighting", the judges said.

The company, set up by Indian entrepreneurs, says indoor air pollution by Kerosene fumes kills 1.5m people per year.

One of the entrepreneurs said: "This will do to kerosene what mobile phones did to letters."

"The judges were particularly impressed with their highly effective marketing strategy which has put solar lighting within reach of over a million people in 32 countries with significant potential for further expansion," the Ashden Awards said in a statement.

According to the awards body, in three years REF has helped 300,000 people in nine Africa countries gain access to solar energy.

THE FIRST WORLD DOESN'T NEED THIS KIND OF THING, BUT THE THIRD WORLD DOES.

GOOD.

(IF OBAMA IS ALLOWED UNCHECKED POWER FOR TWO MORE YEARS, THEN THE USA WILL BE A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY AND NEED THESE LAMPS, TOO!)

Friday, July 02, 2010

Clashes between Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels in southeast Turkey intensified on Friday after Turkish planes bombed Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq. More than 10,000 soldiers, backed by helicopter gunships, clashed with the rebels near the Iraq border in Sirnak and Hakkari provinces, and troop reinforcements were sent in from regional military bases to help the offensive.

“Separatist terrorist organisation targets were hit by Turkish armed forces planes last night in northern Iraq, notably in the Qandil mountain and Hakurk region,” the Army said.

IF ISRAEL DID SOMETHING SIMILAR THE WHOLE WORLD WOULD BE IN OUTRAGED UPROAR - ESPECIALLY TURKEY.

TURKS CAN KILL KURDISH MUSLIMS AND NOT A SINGLE JIHADIST SAYS BOO; AND YOU CAN DAMN SURE BETCHYA THAT KING ABDULLAH DOESN'T GIVE A CRAP.

His allegiance to the KKK, however, did help push Byrd into the political arena. Encouraged by the grand dragon of his KKK branch, Byrd ran on the Democratic ticket for West Virginia's House of Delegates in 1946.

THE LIES AND EXCUSES ALL THR BGITIME DEMOCRATS AND LIBS TOLD IN BEHALF OF THIS RACIST SPENDTHRIFT AND EGOMANIAC PROVES THAT TODAY'S DEMOCRATS AND THE LEFT HAVE NO MORALS AND HENCE NO SHAME.

An interview at the New English Review with Dr. Richard L. Rubinstein, Yale fellow, "Distinguished Professor of the Year", and Harvard Phd.

"Obama is really a revolutionary. That doesn't mean he's looking to stir up violent trouble but I believe he is trying to transform both the American political system and economic system and America's relationship to the world. I also believe that he has decided that America must make its peace with Iran. I believe that he is a man who is highly intelligent, knows what he's doing and in spite of the fact that he has attracted liberal Jewish supporters, some with great wealth. His intention is to correct the historical mistake of the creation of the state of Israel.

Given Obama's background, the fact that his family was, on his father's side was Muslim, that his sister is a Muslim, that his half brother is a Muslim, there is no doubt that he heard a great deal about Islam and Israel from them before he took office and though he was not candid about it at first, he has by his decisions and his symbolic actions made it clear where his sympathies are.

... In addition to that, he has a hostility towards Western Europe, especially to England as characterized by the symbolic action of returning the bust of Winston Churchill to the English, one of his first acts.

And he has made some interesting symbolic moves with, for example, bowing to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia since King Abdullah is the keeper of the two holiest shrines of Islam, Mecca and Medina, one wonders why he did this.

But when a head of state, which is what Obama is, makes a symbolic statement like that you know he is trying to convey a message, and it’s not one which we in western civilization are willing to accept.

Finally, he has talked of a nuclear-free Middle East and a nuclear-free world, and what he intends to do, of course, if he can, is to disarm Israel’s great equalizer. It has been able to defend itself against the far more numerous Arabs by virtue of the fact that it has nuclear weapons and Obama will, and he’s indicated he will apply every pressure to Israel to take that equalizer away from them.

So the way I see it, is that this man is a menace to Israel, to Western Europe, and I might add that Western Europe is beginning to have sanctions against Iran that are far greater and more effective than anything Obama was willing to tolerate, and to the whole of the Western World. He aims for a radical transformation, he is the most radical president that America has ever had!"

He asked her, "Your Majesty, how do you run such an efficient government? Are there any tips you can give to me?"

"Well," said the Queen, "the most important thing is to surround yourself with intelligent people."

Obama frowned, and then asked, "But how do I know the people around me are reallyintelligent?"

The Queentook a sip of tea. "Oh, that's easy; you just ask them to answer an intelligent riddle." The Queen pushed a button on her intercom. "Please send in the Prime Minister in here, would you?"

David Cameron walked into the room and said, “Yes, my Queen?"

TheQueen smiled and said, "Answer me this please, Mr. Prime Minister, your mother and father have a child. It is not your brother and it is not your sister.. Who is it?"

Without pausing for a moment, David Cameron answered, "That would be me."

"Yes! Very good," said the Queen.

Obama went back home to ask Joe Biden, his vice presidential choice the same question. "Joe, answer this for me. Your mother and your father have a child. It's not your brother and it's not your sister. Who is it?"

"I'm not sure," saidBiden. "Let me get back to you on that one." He went to hisadvisors and asked every one, but none could give him an answer.

Finally, he ended up in the men's room and recognized Colin Powell's shoes in the next stall. Biden asked Powell, "Colin, can you answer this for me? Your mother and father have a child and it's not your brother or your sister.. Who is it?" Colin Powell yelled back, "That's easy, it's me!"

Biden smiled, and said, "Thanks!" Then, he went back to speak with Obama. "Say, I did some research and I have the answer to that riddle. It's Colin Powell!"

Thursday, July 01, 2010

"We need a mayor who will be willing to divide Jerusalem. (Nir) Barkat is unfit to be mayor," former minister Yossi Sarid said Thursday at a conference organized by Peace Now against the plan to demolish Palestinian homes in Silwan and build an archeological park in their place.

[...]

Meretz Chairman Chaim Oron told the conference, "Whoever thwarts a solution in Jerusalem will thwart the entire (peace) agreement. Whoever speaks of a two-state solution but does not speak of two capitals in Jerusalem is deceiving himself and the public."

Itai Mazrev, who runs Peace Now's Jerusalem branch, said, "In the coming weeks Barkat won’t have a moment's peace. We will launch a campaign that no one will be able to ignore.

It's a shame we've still got these dhimmis to contend with, and Ynet to pay lip service to them. They continually fail to recognize how they lost support over the years, with Meretz reduced to but 3 measly seats in Knesset, and continue to push for defeatism. It's very sad.

SAN DIEGO -- The son of a Hamas founder who became a Christian and an Israeli spy will be granted U.S. asylum after he passes a routine background check, an immigration judge ruled Wednesday.

Mosab Hassan Yousef got the news during a 15-minute deportation hearing after a U.S. Department of Homeland Security attorney said the government was dropping its objections.

The agency denied Yousef's asylum request in February 2009, arguing that he had been involved in terrorism and was a threat to the United States.

Attorney Kerri Calcador gave no explanation for the government's change of heart.[...]

In his book, Yousef describes growing up admiring Hamas and hating Israel, leading him to buy a couple machine guns and a handgun in 1996. He said the guns didn't work and that he was arrested by Israeli forces before he killed anyone.

He's lucky he didn't succeed, and we're lucky he learned his lessons since. This does provide him fairly well with the chance of redemption. And now he's found asylum and safety from the murderers he wisely thought to turn against.

The Vatican announced on Wednesday that Monsignor Rino Fisichella has been tapped to head a new Vatican office to fight secularization and re-evangelize the West. The move is a tacit acknowledgment that attempts to reinvigorate Christianity in Europe need a boost.

I FEAR IT'S TOO LITTLE AND TOO LATE.

I THINK THE RC CHURCH NEEDS TO REVERT BACK TO A MARRIED CLERGY IF IT'S EVER GONNA MAKE A COME BACK.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

A key event in the politics of partial-birth abortion was a report by a "select panel" of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a supposedly nonpartisan physicians' organization. That report included this statement, which the Supreme Court found highly persuasive in striking down Nebraska's partial-birth abortion ban:

ACOG declared that the partial-birth-abortion procedure "may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman." The Court relied on the ACOG statement as a key example of medical opinion supporting the abortion method.

Here is the shocking part: the ACOG report, as originally drafted, said almost exactly the opposite. The initial draft said that the ACOG panel "could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman." That language horrified the rabidly pro-abortion Elena Kagan, then a deputy assistant to President Clinton for domestic policy. This is what Kagan wrote in a memo to her superiors in the Clinton White House:

Todd Stern just discovered that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) is thinking about issuing a statement (attached) that includes the following sentence: "[A] select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which [the partial-birth] procedure ... would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman." This, of course, would be disaster -- not the less so (in fact, the more so) because ACOG continues to oppose the legislation. It is unclear whether ACOG will issue the statement; even if it does not, there is obviously a chance that the draft will become public.

So Kagan took matters into her own hands: incredibly, she herself appears to have written the key language that eventually appeared in the ACOG report...

IF SHE HAS AN OUNCE OF SELF-RESPECT LEFT - AND ANY RESPECT FOR THE NATION, THE SCOTUS AND THE TRUTH, THEN KAGAN SHOULD WITHDRAW HER NOMINATION AND RESIGN AS SOLICITOR GENERAL.

BTW:

I BETCHYA A MILLION BUCKS THAT CLINTON AND OBAMA KNEW ABOUT KAGAN'S DELIBERATE DECEPTION AND THAT IT CONTRIBUTED TO THEIR HIGH ESTEEM OF HER.

Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan has written the leaders of more than a dozen major U.S. Jewish groups and denominations seeking "repair of my people from the damage" he claims Jews have caused blacks for centuries.

Farrakhan sent the letter along with two books from the Nation of Islam Historical Research Team that the 77-year-old minister said prove "an undeniable record of Jewish Anti-Black behavior," starting with the slave trade and Jim Crow laws.

"We could charge you with being the most deceitful so-called friend, while your history with us shows you have been our worst enemy," he wrote.

Farrakhan has long accused Jews of wrongdoing in speeches, but he has rarely addressed Jewish groups so directly in writing.

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group which distributed copies of the letter, said in a statement Tuesday that Farrakhan's "anti-Semitism is obsessive, diabolical and unrestrained. He has opened a new chapter in his ministry where scapegoating Jews is not just part of a message, but the message."

FARRAKHAN IS A LONGTIME FRIEND OF OBAMA'S CHICAGO PALS WRIGHT AND PFLEGER.

THESE VIEWS OF FARRAKHAN ARE NOTHING NEW.

IT IS TOO LATE FOR OBAMA TO DISASSOCIATE HIMSELF FROM FARRAKHAN OR THROW HIM UNDER THE BUS.

Making good on a campaign pledge by President Obama, the Energy Department had formally sought to drop its plan for Yucca Mountain, a volcanic structure about 100 miles from Las Vegas. But states with major accumulations of waste from nuclear weapons production had petitioned to prevent the department from doing so.

In a 47-page decision, the three-member panel of administrative judges said the Energy Department lacked the authority to drop the petition because it would flout a law passed by Congress.

In the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, Congress directed the Energy Department to file the application and the commission to consider it and “issue a final, merits-based decision approving or disapproving the construction,” the judges said. “Unless Congress directs otherwise, D.O.E. may not single-handedly derail the legislated decision-making process.”

The effect of the decision is unclear for now. Congress would have to appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the Energy Department to pursue the application. But the president’s budget for next year proposes no money at all;

... in the last several years there have been four big SCOTUS cases which IMHO, really define our freedoms and personal liberty

Kelo property rights;

Citizens United free speech;

Heller 2nd amendment

and now McDonald.

I hear a lot from liberals about how the right wants to curtail freedoms, we’re fascists yet when I look at where the liberal Justices ruled or dissented in those aforementioned cases I think it’s pretty clear who are the real curtailers of freedom and liberty.

After all when the State can take your property, restrict your political speech and disarm the populace, you really don’t have much left in the way of freedom.

As Obama's solicitor general, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan urged the Court to dismiss the suit that our 9/11 families have been pressing against the Saudi government and several Saudi princes for their extensive funding of al Qaeda. The families sued under the domestic tort exception to sovereign immunity, which according to Kagan's Supreme Court brief (at p. 14):

requires not merely that the foreign state’s extraterritorial conduct have some causal connection to tortious injury in the United States, but that “the tortious act or omission of that foreign state or of any official or employee” be committed within the United States. 28 U.S.C. 1605(a)(5).

The "tortious act or omission" is the wrongful act (the tort) that leads to the injury. Thus she is claiming that for Saudi funding of al Qaeda to be actionable, the funding itself has to have been transacted within the United States. Compare this with the actual wording of 28 U.S.C. 1605(a)(5):

(a) A foreign state shall not be immune from the jurisdiction of courts of the United States or of the States in any case – ... (5) ... in which money damages are sought against a foreign state for personal injury or death, or damage to or loss of property, occurring in the United States and caused by the tortious act or omission of that foreign state or of any official or employee of that foreign state while acting within the scope of his office or employment..."

Contrary to Kagan's assertion, the law only specifies that the injury has to have occurred within the United States. Not a word about the wrongful act that leads to domestic injury also having to have taken place within the United. Kagan flat lied about the clear wording of a law that goes to the very heart of our ability to use the courts to combat Islamic terrorism, and thanks to the Court's failure to review this crucial case, the simple wording and intent of Congress—that foreign states whose actions do injury in the United States can be sued for those injuries—has now been undone, as if the law had never been passed.

Kagan proves that her lie was self conscious by also lying about the relevant Supreme Court precedent, claiming (again at p. 14):

In Amerada Hess the Court considered and rejected the argument that domestic effects of a foreign state’s conduct abroad satisfy the exception. 488 U.S. at 441.

In fact, the Court in Amerada never considered "the domestic effects of a foreign state's conduct abroad" at all, for the simple reason that there were no domestic injuries in that case. The injuries occurred outside of U.S. territory, which is why the domestic tort exception was held not to apply. Here are the simple facts, as recounted in Justice Rehnquist's majority opinion (joined by Brennan, White, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia and Kennedy):

... the injury to respondents' ship occurred on the high seas some 5,000 miles off the nearest shores of the United States. Despite these telling facts, respondents nonetheless claim that the tortious attack on the Hercules occurred "in the United States." [At p. 440.]

The Amerada Company ship was attacked at sea. Since the tortious act and the damages from it both occurred "5,000 miles off the nearest shores," the Court did not bother to distinguish between the wrongful act and the injuries from it. Kagan uses this to claim that the Court found Amerada's domestic injuries to be unrecoverable, when in fact the Supremes agreed with the district court that there were no domestic injuries (p. 439-441).

Has any solicitor general ever flat lied to the Supreme Court before? Isn't any lawyer who unambiguously lies to the Court about the simple facts of a cited holding subject to disbarment for unethical behavior? And she did it for an unethical purpose: to help the financiers of 9/11 escape justice. Any moral person would either resign in the face of such a job assignment, or would limit himself to making what honest arguments could be mustered. This moral pervert chose to lie and ought to be busted out of the profession for it, not promoted to the highest court in the land.

Obama favors a legal response to terror while working to pull the law's teeth

Obama has long been a proponent of shifting from a military response to Islamic terrorism to a civilian/criminal law response. Putting the terrorists in jail is supposedly more effective shooting them on the battlefield. This is why Attorney General Eric Holder decided to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in New York City. There is supposedly nothing Mohammad wants less than a public platform for crowing that America must submit or die, while credibly demanding that we must either reveal our intelligence secrets or let him go free.

It is an insane idea, seeking to move the fight against Islamic terror to an arena that disarms us and empowers them, but even that isn't enough for Obama. He has to have his solicitor general lie to the Supreme Court for him in a way that guts what laws Congress has already passed for fighting terror in the courts. First he moves the fight to our relatively toothless courts, then he pulls what teeth the courts have.

If Obama's gutting of the legal fight against terror is intentional it means that he prefers America to have NO effective defense against Islamic terrorists (perhaps because they are his co-religionists). Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court is a clear indication of this intent. Obama is ratifying, in the strongest possible way, her gutting of the law, and like Kagan, he also proves intent by repetition, nominating Kagan's partner in crime, James Cole, to be his Deputy Attorney General.

Oops!... Obama does it again: DAG nominee also favors a legal response to terror while working to pull the law's teeth

Shortly after 9/11, Cole wrote that, since the targets were primarily civilian, the 9/11 attacks should not be viewed as acts of war, but as violations of civilian law, to be combated through our civilian court system. If Cole really wanted to make the civilian courts our main line of defense against Islamic terrorism he would be for aggressive use of the courts in this fight, but in practice, he comes down on the other side, arguing as the lawyer for one of the implicated Saudi princes that the family suit to recover damages from the 9/11 attacks is invalid.

In light of this history, it is impossible to fathom how Mr. Cole can ethically carry out his duties and responsibilities as the de facto head of the Justice Department while U.S. troops are fighting terrorists who receive funding and support from organizations associated with the Saudi government and their proxies. This is a direct conflict of interest. Given Saudi NGOs’ continued involvement in terrorist facilitation world-wide and their connection to the Saudi royal family, this conflict of interest will cripple Mr. Cole’s ability to ethically perform his duties as head of a department charged with investigating and prosecuting terrorist facilitators associated with or working for the Saudi government.

Yes well, to Obama, that's a feature, not a bug. Like Obama, Cole is against a military response to Islamic terror and he is against a civilian court response. In sum, neither of them want the United States to fight on any front, but want us instead to appease and submit to Islamic terror.

Which is nothing new. Obama's entire Department of Justice is of the same stripe:

Attorney General Eric Holder says nine Obama appointees in the Justice Department have represented or advocated for terrorist detainees before joining the Justice Department. But he does not reveal any names beyond the two officials whose work has already been publicly reported. And all the lawyers, according to Holder, are eligible to work on general detainee matters, even if there are specific parts of some cases they cannot be involved in. [Byron York February 2010.]

Which is worse, the DOJ lawyers who defended terrorists pro bono on the basis of shared contempt for America, or the DAG nominee who defends the financiers of terror for a share of their filthy lucre? "Why decide?" says Obama: "Hire 'em all!" So long as they are defenders of al Qaeda, its all good.

Why isn't Congress fighting back?

While Obama's terror-defending lawyers are determined to secure rights and civilian court appearances for Islamic terrorists who should be treated as criminal combatants under military justice, they are equally determined to prevent our 9/11 families from getting their day in court, despite the clear intent of Congress that they should. It is time for Congress to start fighting back. The Supreme Court shamefully failed to review a blatant subversion of congressional intent on a crucial front of the war against terror, but Congress doesn't have to take it lying down.

How about passing a clarification to the domestic tort exception that explicitly renounces Kagan's attempt to gut the clear intent of the law? Just use the Senate hearings on Kagan's nomination (commencing this week) to expose her devastating lies to the Supreme Court and to agitate for a clarification of the law that would allow the families' suit to proceed. Kagan would be routed, and the destruction she has wreaked on our terror war efforts would be repaired, killing two dirty birds with one stone.

Monday, June 28, 2010

The dismissal of the voter intimidation lawsuit against armed New Black Panthers in Philadelphia is the most prominent example of this hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of civil rights laws. But that dismissal is far from the only manifestation of the beliefs infesting the Department. Many other cases and decisions — some of which I will detail below — are in question and deserve scrutiny.

... But I believe the best explanation for the corrupt dismissal of the case is the profound hostility by the Obama Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department towards a race-neutral enforcement of civil rights laws.

This hostility was — and is — on open display within the Department of Justice.

Example after example exists where this dirty little secret manifested itself within the Department and affected Department policy.

...

Two obvious examples of the Obama administration’s hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of the civil rights laws:

The Department recently filed a brief supporting the use of race-based preferences at the University of Texas. Holder’s DOJ wants Texas to be able to give extra admissions credit to the skin color of certain college applicants. Of course some races won’t get the benefit of these racial preferences, while the political allies of the administration will.

In New Haven, Connecticut, the Holder Justice Department took the side of those who wanted to racially discriminate against white and Hispanic firefighters seeking promotion. Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court rejected the position of the Civil Rights Division. (It is no accident, incidentally, that senior Department attorney Steven Rosenbaum was involved in the formation of the Department’s racially biased approach in New Haven, just as he was involved in the dismissal of the New Black Panther case when he was acting deputy assistant attorney general, a political position in the Civil Rights Division.)

...

I worked closely with the former chief of the Voting Section, Christopher Coates, during my time at the Justice Department. He was a voting rights giant. He brought cases to stop racial discrimination as far back as 1976, just a decade after passage of the Voting Rights Act. Coates was a former attorney with the ACLU, and while at Justice, he was instrumental in bringing the case against the New Black Panther Party.

Because he believed in race-neutral enforcement of the civil rights laws, his powers as voting section chief were slowly sucked away by the Holder Justice Department.

Eventually made an intentionally powerless figurehead, Coates was transferred to South Carolina to work in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. His courageous going-away speech to the entire Voting Section and to the deputy assistant attorney general left little doubt about the “change” at Justice:

I have never assumed that I was entitled to ignore that clear language in federal law and therefore ignore incidents where evidence showed white voters were discriminated against or where the wrongdoers were themselves members of a minority group. … I have had many discussions concerning these cases. In one of my discussions concerning the Ike Brown case, I had a lawyer say he was opposed to our filing such suits. When I asked why, he said that only when he could go to Mississippi and find no disparities between the socioeconomic levels of black and white residents, might he support such a suit. But until that day, he did not think that we should be filing voting rights cases against blacks or on behalf of white voters.

I believe that one of the most detrimental ways to politicize the enforcement process in the Voting Section is to enforce the provisions of the Voting Rights Act only for the protection of certain racial or ethnic minorities; or to take the position that the Voting Section is not going to enforce certain provision of any of the voting statutes the Voting Section has the responsibility to enforce. Such decisions carry with them obvious, enormous implications for partisan political struggles.

Coates was not issuing a hypothetical warning for some future dereliction of the Department’s duty. The danger had already arrived.

... The massive engine of federal government should not be used to leverage outcomes as far as possible for only national racial minorities, but that is exactly what is happening.

... the universal protections that apply to all Americans in the 14th and 15th Amendments are no barrier to one-way enforcement when you control the mechanics of the federal bureaucracy. After all, few will ever know about the civil rights cases this administration refuses to bring. A perk of being in charge is deciding what is the best use of government resources, and what is the best exercise of prosecutorial discretion.

Americans have the right to know, however, whether or not this administration harbors hostility towards a race-neutral enforcement of the civil rights laws. The firsthand experience of many within the Justice Department leaves no doubt about this insidious attitude.

THE POTUS TAKES AN OATH TO FAITHFULLY PRESERVE, PRTOECT AND DEFEND THE CONSITUTION.

ADAMS IS SAYING THAT THIS WAS NOT THE CASE.

AFTER WE RETAKE THE HOUSE THIS NOVEMBER, I THINK DARRELL ISSA SHOULD SUBPOENA HOLDER AND OBAMA AND DISCOVER IF PROSECUTIONS WERE DROPPED FOR POLITICAL OR RACIAL REASONS.

Three X-rays of Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe's chest and pelvis taken during a hospital visit have sold for more than 10 times their pre-sale estimates, earning $45,000 (29,800 pounds).

Auction house Julien's said in a statement that the sale was part of an auction of Hollywood Legends memorabilia which took place at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas over the weekend with the X-rays expected to go for $800 to $1,200 each.

There's little reason or need to go fly there. According to this news clip:

Turkey is closing its skies to Israeli planes, Turkish media outlets reported Monday. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the closure in a meeting with Canadian journalists in Toronto, they said.

[...]

Israeli officials said they were not informed of any Turkish change in policy regarding Israeli flights. Unless Turkey makes an official statement, Israel will continue to assume that Turkish skies are open, they said.

But what's the point in flying there? Even before the flotilla farce, there were so many reports on their return to vicious anti-semitism, many Israel tourists stopped going there. It's practically best now to close down Israeli travel offices in Turkey, because there won't be much demand for them.

According to suspicions, a terror cell consisting of seven Nazareth residents operated in Israel on behalf of global jihad, it was cleared for publication Monday after the men were indicted.

In what the Shin Bet and Amakim Police call one of the most severe security-related affairs in north Israel in recent years, seven young Muslim men who were inspired by extremist Islamist ideology operated in the region and even tried to join a terror network with links to al-Qaeda.

Among the crimes attributed to three of the cell members is the murder of 54-year-old taxi driver Yefim Weinstein in November 2009. Weinstein, from Upper Nazareth, was found dead near Kibbutz Kfar HaHoresh.

Three of the cell members - Ahmed Ali Ahmed (21), Haider Zaidana (26) and Raleb Ganayim (22) were indicted for the murder on Monday. The three Muslims became more radical over the past few years after being exposed to online video clips posted by Osama bin Laden and his followers, which also helped them obtain knowledge on the use of weapons and explosives.

The were charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, assault, Molotov cocktail attacks, weapons manufacturing and arms trade and a host of other criminal offences, including kidnapping and armed robbery.

Police say the men have admitted to the crimes, reenacted some of them and led investigators to their arms caches.

The investigation led to the arrest of four other Arab-Israeli residents who were charged mostly with weapons offences and belonging to an illegal organization. The men were named as Asim Muhhamad Alan (23), Abed al-Rahman Izz al-Din Abu Salim (19) and Udei Mahmoud Azzam (23) – all from Nazareth. Another suspect, Omar Ali Kahili (22), resides in the nearby village Umm el-Ganem.

When they're influenced by the Religion of Peace, this is what you can only expect could happen. This brings to mind a case that took place in Florida a few years ago, of 2 Muslims who may have learned how to build bombs online, and certainly had a videotape with instructions.

Much ado was made of Obama's warning health-insurance companies not to raise costs.

And I personally know of several people who supported ObamaKare because they believed that ObamaKare would help them to keep their children on the family's health-insurance plan until those children reach age twenty-six. Quite the attractive carrot for Obama's health-insurance reform, apparently.

It is among the top early selling points of the health-care overhaul -- a new rule that has particular appeal for middle-class, middle-age voters: Young adults who lack health insurance will soon be able to remain on their parents' plans until age 26.

But although Obama administration officials note that the provision will help millions, the benefit is proving less immediate than many families expect.

The administration's success in convincing dozens of insurers to comply with the provision earlier than the law requires has left many parents with the impression that their adult children will be eligible for continuing coverage far sooner than is likely to be the case, experts said.

Furthermore,

Many military families are also just learning that the young adult children provision -- and the rest of the overhaul -- won't apply to TRICARE, the Defense Department health plan serving 9.6 million active and retired service members and their families.

[...]

Many military families are also just learning that the young adult children provision -- and the rest of the overhaul -- won't apply to TRICARE, the Defense Department health plan serving 9.6 million active and retired service members and their families.

[...]

The years to come could bring further rude awakenings for parents as employers and insurance companies look for ways to offset the added costs of covering these workers' children longer into adulthood, experts say.

For instance, roughly half of employer-based insurance plans currently charge a blanket family rate regardless of how many children are included on the plan. But the survey by Mercer found that one in five are now strongly considering or likely to start charging on a per-child basis.

Similarly, while Mercer found that on average employers cover more than two-thirds of the cost of family plans, 16 percent said they are strongly considering or likely to require their workers to start contributing a greater share.

ObamaKare - smoke and mirrors, and utopian fantasy that cannot possibly be fulfilled.

And now that the bill has been passed, we who bear the burden of the costs of ObamaKare are finding out more and more of the ugly details. More such ugly details to come. Quite the reality check is looming.

A unit of female Israeli army cadets was undergoing specialist training by elite commandos last week in preparation for a showdown at sea with an all-women Lebanese peace ship due to sail for Gaza.

The Israelis, all conscripts aged between 18 and 20, are being trained to board the Mariam, which is being loaded with humanitarian supplies at the Lebanese port of Tripoli before running the Israeli blockade.

I SURE HOPE THEY HAVE PLENTY OF VIDEO CAMERAS CUZ THIS IS ONE FIGHT I SURE WANNA SEE!

A Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) agent has broken his cover in an attempt to help his former fellow agent avoid deportation from the United States.

Gonen Ben-Yitzchak, who left the service four years ago, worked for 10 years as one of the handlers of Mosab Hassan Yousef, author of the book “Son of Hamas.”

Yousef is the eldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founder of Hamas, and for a decade was also an informant for the Jewish State. The team was responsible for preventing countless terrorist attacks, among them assassination attempts on the life of President Shimon Peres and Shas party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Yousef subsequently emigrated to the United States, and converted to Christianity. But he now faces what might be a life-threatening situation, having revealed his identity to the American authorities in an application for asylum. The former agent said he did not realize that publishing the details of his life in his autobiography might jeopardize his chances of remaining there, rather than prove his intent to sabotage Hamas.

... Ben-Yitzchak allowed himself to be photographed on Wednesday at a Washington dinner honoring Yousef and others. The honorees received the Endowment for Middle East Truth's Rays of Light in the Darkness Award.

“He risked his life every day in order to prevent” terrorism,” Ben-Yitzchak said of Yousef. “The truth is Mosab always prevented killings. Mosab is not a terrorist!”

In his book, Yousef noted that many Shin Bet operations were canceled “because of [Ben-Yitzchak's] command” in order to avoid endangering his life. Numerous advocates for the former agent have said that his life would be endangered if he is deported to Judea and Samaria.

The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has declined to comment on the case. Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-CO), another honoree at the dinner, said he had sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano also requesting that Yousef not be deported.

THIS ATTEMPTED DEPORTATION IS JUST ANOTHER INSTANCE OF OBAMA AIDING GLOBAL JIHAD AND HURTING ISRAEL.